


if I had a day that I could give you

by moodyme



Series: TRC/CDTH Prompt Week 2020 [5]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:14:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24401140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodyme/pseuds/moodyme
Summary: Blue meets Gansey in the spring, he dies in the winter of the same year.Blue continues to look for him throughout time.TRC/CDTH Spring Prompt Week Day 3: Historical/Reincarnation
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent
Series: TRC/CDTH Prompt Week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1763401
Kudos: 12
Collections: TRC/ CDTH Prompt Week 2020





	if I had a day that I could give you

**Author's Note:**

> Title from John Denver’s “Sunshine on my shoulder”.

Visitors to the forest are rare, sometimes only appearing once in several decades.

Blue herself has never met one, although she yearns to. Desperately.

Something about their otherness intrigues her, callS to her, makes her want to find out how they deal with being so - devoid of magic.

So when a breeze tells her about the stranger, she hurriedly makes her way on sure feet to the spot where the trees whisper that he is. Her feet that have walked the forest for ages, yet never quite with this much excitement.

She knows the trees by name, and she hums her thanks to them as they guide her to the source of her curiosity.

‘The forest will always provide,’ her mother always told her. And she had known it to be true, had seen how the forest gave since before she could remember. But this was a great gift indeed.

She finds the stranger in a small clearing, and she watches him as he stares up at the canopy of twisted, intertwined, beautiful, branches with an unbelievable look of awe. The stranger is handsome, with his well defined jaw, strait nose, and brown hair that is swept aside in an interesting fashion.

The look of him stirs something besides simple curiosity within her. She doesn’t just want to see him, she wants to know him.

“What are you doing here?” She demands as she steps from the cover of the trees, and hopes her voice comes across as commanding, rather than frightening.

The man startles, and begins rambling words that are strange, and rough. He pauses abruptly, and a look of realization passes over him. He mutters something else in a voice that sounds exasperated.

He quirks an eyebrow and offers a crooked smile. His words go from rough to something smoother, rounded and soft.

Blue still doesn’t understand him.

“I can’t understand you.”

He sighs and bites out a string of stilted words, like he himself is unsure of them. These are neither rough nor soft, but jagged.

“No,” she says, and shakes her head. “Not that either.”

He offers a sheepish smile. “ _You wouldn’t happen to know Latin, by any chance?_ ” He asks around a laugh.

“ _Yes,_ ” She replies. Of course she spoke Latin. It wasn’t the language of the trees, but it was one that was dear to it’s creator, and therefore , one known by its people.

The strangers face lit up like the sun, and he took a step forward.

“ _Wonderful!_ _Do you happen to know the name of this place? Are you from around here? I myself wandered in and I seem to have found myself thoroughly lost.”_

For being lost, the man seemed remarkably happy.

“ _Yes, I know the name - Cabeswater. Yes, I am from here._ ”

The trees spoke then, telling her to guide the man back to the village. The suggestion pleased her. She had been afraid they would demand she guide him away from them, but instead they seemed to be as curious about as she was.

* * *

Gansey, the stranger, appeared in the spring.

Blue fell in love with him in the summer.

He was dead by winter.

* * *

  
She head soft footfalls behind her, the sound of the snow being trodden. She was furious that someone would disturb her in her grief, that they would step foot in the clearing that she selfishly considered hers, since it was where she had first met her beloved.

She turned to berate the intruder, but froze at the sight of him.

Ronan.

The trees were her and her families gods. But the trees themselves worshipped yet another god, considered by them even greater, since he was the creator of the trees.

Blue wondered if she should prostrate herself, but she was already kneeling, brought low in her mourning, so she didn’t.

“The trees have heard your weeping, and they despair for you. I have heard your tears, and theirs.”

Ronan’s voice wasn’t gentle, something Blue was thankful for. But it was calm, which she was even more thankful for.

“I don’t understand-“

“As one of the people of the trees, you have been given a long life, an eternity compared with the lives of humans. And you would live all that time in despair for your beloved, who has been taken.”

Ronan looked away at that, and Blue couldn’t help but wonder if he spoke from experience.

“I have decided that your love will be reborn, throughout time.”

Fresh tears welled up in Blue’s eyes, and she started to thank him.

“It is not a gift,” Ronan sighs, shaking his head, “I can grant his soul reincarnation, but not choose where or when or how. You will have to find him, across time, across the far reaches of the Earth. You may never find him again. And if you do, you have to hope he’ll remember his first life, the one with you. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. It is not a gift. It is a curse.”

Blue hears the warning, hears the sadness in Ronan’s voice, but she refuses to see it that way. She would give anything to find him again. The fact that she has the chance now, is a gift, a gift she will never be able to repay.

“I will find him,” she swears, to Roman and to herself.

* * *

And she does.

Nearly a hundred years later, in a war torn village in France. The irony is that she hadn’t been looking for him when she found him.

The irony, the cruel irony, was that he was dying when she found him.

He makes to sit up from the cot when she enters, but collapses back with a groan, falling into a stupor.

He is different, a little older, his face more weathered, his hands rougher. But Blue knows him, instantly.

It’s the eyes, she thinks.

Ronan had once told her that the eyes revealed the soul, and she now knew it to be true. 

She hurriedly moves to inspect the wound across his abdomen. It is jagged, and deep. And utterly untreatable.

She wants to curse fate. More than that, she wants to curse herself - for being to late, for not searching for him harder, for not being able to heal him.

Blue caresses his fevered brow as gently as she can, and he rouses for a moment.

He locks eyes with her, and remembrance flashes weakly across his face.

“Blue,” He whispers, his voice weak.

It’s all he manages before he collapses again.

His death is slow, lasted all through the night. He doesn’t stir again. He is gone by morning.

Blue waits until his last breath before she allows herself to weep.

* * *

The next two times she finds him, once when he is an old man in Rome and the other as a young soldier in the army of a rebellious Welsh king, he doesn’t remember her.

She spends those lives of his with him anyway, a friendly companion who cares for him in his old age, and as a faithful friend always ready with a joke or a piece of advice in the harsh countryside of Wales.

He doesn’t love her in either, except for as a friend. And while that stings her heart, she is more grateful for the fact that , in both cases, she gets to spend more than a summer or a night with him.

She doesn’t have to watch him die in either of these lives of his.  
  


* * *

Several hundred years pass without her finding him again.

Eventually, Ronan grows tired of Europe, and he moves the forest.

It’s takes time to get used to the new earth beneath them, even longer for the trees to regain their full strength from the journey.   
  
Blue discovers that the 20th century is almost half over before she realizes it had even arrived, and makes her way to the nearest large city - the capital, it turns out.

Someone she passed on the street told her that the Washington Monument was a good place to start her exploration, and she finds herself staring up at a long, pointed, tower-like structure.

It looks like the old pyramids her mother had told her about, and she had finally saw for herself nearly 100 hundreds before, if someone had taken one and stretched it out.

“It sure is a sight to behold, isn’t it?” The man to her left says.

“It sure is,” Blue lies. 

“First time in DC?” He asks.

“Yes, it is.”

“I can always tell,” he hums, and taps his finger to his temple before reaching out to shake her hand. “I’m Richard Gansey.”

Blues ears are ringing.

“Gansey?” She repeats. He doesn’t- he doesn’t look right, the eyes aren’t right, but-

The man laughs. “Unusual, isn’t it? It’s a corruption of Guernsey.”

“Oh,” Blue sighs, disappointed. Of course. Gander hasn’t had the same name in the other times he had found him, why should he now? It was foolish to get her hopes up. She tells him her name, which he raises an eyebrow at but doesn’t make a further comment on.

“Well, if you need a guide to the city, I’m happy to oblige,” He offers.

Blue thanks him, but turns down the offer. DC has, for today at least, lost all its charm. She only wants to go back to the forest.

* * *

Strangers in the forest are rare, and Blue is still curious about each one. 

She is talking with Ronan when the trees whisper about the presence of the stranger, and they share a look.

“Aren’t you curious?” Blue asks.

“Aren’t you ever not?” Ronan scoffs.

Nevertheless, he allows himself to be dragged along by Blue as she follows the path the trees tell her.

The stranger is crouched low when they find him, examining the shells strewn beneath him. Blue doesn’t understand how, but he reminds her of the forest, of the earth itself.

He stands, and turns until he is facing their direction.

“Hello?” He calls out. There’s no fear in his voice, only curiosity.

Blue goes to step out and talk with him, but is stopped by Ronan who is frozen behind her, and staring at the stranger.

“Ronan?” She says, tentatively.   
  
He shakes his head as though to clear it and says, “You speak with him. It’s too early for me, I-“

With that, he is gone, only air filling the space where he had been standing.

“Hello?” The stranger says again, and Blue steps out of her hiding place.

“Hello,” Blue says, and notices the way the boy visible relaxes. “What are you doing out here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” he answers, suspiciously.

“Sure,” Blue drawls, “But I asked you first.”

He shrugs. “My friend dragged me out here, said he’d been looking for some magical forest.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” He huffs, “He says he’s looking for someone and-“

“Adam!” A voice says, ringing out through the forest. “Adam where did you go?”

“That’s him now,” Adams says, and cups his hands around his mouth. “Over here Gansey!”

Blue laughs, and thanks the forest, and Ronan.

She has searched for her beloved for so many years, and yet he has found her.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
